EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Soderlund predicts that the life cycle of the newest consoles from Sony and Microsoft will not be as long as the last console cycle (which has not ended yet) Soderlund says that he expects the PS4 and Xbox One console cycle to last for five to six years. Soderlund, who is in charge of EA's console and PC games development, also said that the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation "may have gone on a little bit longer than I would have wanted."

"At the same time, you have seen games like The Last of Us and GTA V at the end of a cycle which perhaps you would not have expected a few years ago," he added. "But a five, six year gap is what I expect going forward."

Microsoft launched Xbox 360 eight years ago, and Sony launched PS3 seven years ago. On Thursday, PlayStation UK boss Fergal Gara also suggested that the PS4 lifecycle might be shorter than that of the PS3 in certain markets.

"I think there's reason to believe that the next cycle might be shorter in markets such as the UK," he said. "It's probably a sign of the times and how much has changed in seven years, but I think the willingness and the appetite to pick up new technology fast has probably changed quite a bit."

Comments

All the more reason for Backwards compatibility, its far easier to sell a new console with a large library to chose from while new stuff trickles in than buy something with no games for it. No BWC makes the new stuff not worth the loss of shelf space. If you do not support BWC at least license off the old console to anyone able to make a multi system.

Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.

Sony and MS don't. They want the life cycle to last as long as humanly possible.

Remember, the Xbox division has yet to make a dime in profit over its lifetime, and SCE hasn't made a dime in profit in over a decade. If a gen lasts longer, they have a much better opportunity to make more money.

Three years ago or so they mentioned that the usual life cycle of any video game console is 5 years. However due to the fracas "Great Recession" the Xbox 360 and the PS3 would have an expanded shelf life. That now lasted about 8 years, although fears from gamers would be up to a full 10 years time sweating it out.

Problem with this is, the improvements in game graphics are rapidly beginning to converge on photorealistic. The graphics leap this gen is a ton smaller than any previous gen, and this is after a particularly long lifecycle. If the next gen comes out sooner, the leap in graphics is going to seem even smaller. There can of course be improvements in other areas, but unless a major game-changer comes around (which, note, not even Kinect could become), it's going to be hard to sell another gen in the next ten years.

Hell, I really don't see the point of upgrading this gen (aside from the Wii -> Wii U, which is a bigger leap than the PS4 or XBOne). But I suppose I'll have to in a couple years for new games.

I'm guessing that's 30+ years away. It's going to take a while for 4K to become common, plus increasing the fidelity of physics and AI is going to take a while. Not necessarily in the power needed, but research in the algorithms.

Law of Diminishing Returns is going to hit in long before then though. People aren't going to want to pay the huge difference in cost for incremental returns.